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I dedicate this dissertation to my parents and my fiancee, Juan Wang, for their patience, tolerance and constant support during the completion of this dissertation. iii Acknowledgments This work could not have been completed without the support of several people. First, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Prof. Dimitris E. Ioannou, for his insight, guidance, encouragement and support during my graduate study at George Mason University. His critical thinking skills and clarity of thinking made working with him an enjoyable and rewarding experience. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have Prof. Ioannou as my academic advisor. I would also like to express my thanks to Akram A. Salman who was an ESD engi-neer with Advanced Micro Devices, for his guidance and suggestions on the project of field-effect-diode at the initial stage of my graduate study. His continued encour-agement and motivation during that project helped me a lot